


Monster

by allihearisradiogaga



Series: Infected AU [7]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Infected AU, Infected Characters, Infected Leon, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allihearisradiogaga/pseuds/allihearisradiogaga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agents Kennedy and Harper are sent on assignment to investigate a series of B.O.W. attacks.  With the help of Agent Sheva Alomar, they find that the attacks are much more complicated than they originally anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Though this is a one-shot, it makes much more sense if you get the context of the other Infected AU fics (readable in this same series). Also, this is based off of the designs and ideas of lord-owlsnake on tumblr. http://lord-owlsnake.tumblr.com/infectedAU (Check that out for awesome stuff.)

**1**

“So, what’s the problem?” asked Helena, remaining staunchly upright in her chair.

“That’s what we’re worried about,” said O’Brian.  He picked the file in front of him and placed it back on the desk.  “And that’s why we’re calling you and Agent Kennedy in on this one.  There have been trace amounts of the C-virus in the same area where Tricell was based just five years ago, and there have been _attacks_.”

“So what does Agent Kennedy have to offer that other Agents don’t?” asked Agent Harper.  She raised an eyebrow.  “You’re still aware that he’s not completely cleared for active service yet.”

Clive’s eyes darted to her neck and back to her eyes.  If she noticed this, she didn’t mention it.  “We were hoping,” he said,” to get him into the action—he’s the only one we can, with confidence, send in to investigate at this point.”

“You want him to do what?”

“To find those who are responsible.  To blend in with the B.O.W.s on the ground there and lead us to them—and take this threat _down_.”

Helena stood up immediately, pushing out the chair behind her as she did.  A sharp pain stung through her face and neck, but she paid it no mind.  “That man can hardly face _himself_ right now, and you want to have him pretend to be the one thing he never wants to be?”  She took a step back and took a breath.  “You can reference his psychological evaluation if you want to hear what I think of this operation.”

Helena turned and marched toward the door, leaving O’Brian and the files full of bad ideas before he could attempt anything else.  “Helena,” he said, but she didn’t turn around.  “Helena, you weren’t the first person I asked.”

Helena stopped in the doorway.  “What?” she asked, not yet turning around.

“You don’t think I didn’t ask Redfield to go down there first?  He’s got the experience.”

“And you wanted Piers…”

“Listen, I’m here to save lives.”  Helena turned back to him, careful while turning her neck.  “And this is the plan I have.  The Nivans boy is chomping at the bit to get out there.”

“So Chris said no, and you came to me.”

“He said no, and I went to Piers.  _He_ told me that he probably wasn’t ready even though he wanted to go.”  Clive shrugged, and Helena opened her mouth to talk, but he didn’t let her.  “I didn’t go to you next.  I’m not an idiot.  I knew you’d say no.”

“Then—you didn’t.”

“He already said yes,” said O’Brian, straightening his files and placing them on the other side of the desk for Helena.  “You both ship out tomorrow morning.  Your contact there is local Agent Sheva Alomar.”

Helena didn’t say anything for a moment.  She stepped forward and took the file.  “This is a bad idea,” she said.  “And I’m telling you that right now.

Clive didn’t reply.  Helena glanced at the file one more time, and spun on her heel, leaving O’Brian alone.  He glanced down at the copy of the files he had on his desk.  He flipped open the file, glancing at the artist’s depictions of the B.O.W.s the locals claimed they had seen in the night.  They seemed to match the C-virus B.O.W.s observed in the 2013 disasters—but the monsters were more gruesome, more terrible.  Clive also did not notice any J’avo, the common manifestation of the C-virus mutation.  Were the virus simply released, those mutations should have been present.  _Someone_ was engineering these B.O.W.s.  And Agent Kennedy would have to stop them.  At this point, he was their only defense.

 

**2**

“Hello,” said the woman, holding out her hand to Helena, who took it.  “The famous Helena Harper,” she said with a slight accent and a curt smile.  “I have heard so much about you.”

“I hope not from the tabloids,” said Helena, returning her tense smile.  “Chris has told me about your work her in ’09.  Good stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Sheva, gesturing for Helena to walk with her.  “Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, apparently.  We’re still working cleanup around here.  The plagas are persistent little assholes.”

“Well, that’s what we’re here to help with,” said Helena.  She paused for a moment, and continued: “Though with the re-emergence of the C-Virus down here…”

Sheva nodded.  “We haven’t seen anything like it before.  O’Brian showed you the depictions, yes?”  Helena nodded.  “He said you and Agent Kennedy were experienced with this virus.”

“Sadly, yes,” said Helena.  “And Tall Oaks was a contained environment.  Lanshiang, and over in Europe—those were even worse.  And we don’t’ want to see that again, here.”

“Of course,” said Sheva.  She glanced over her shoulder, behind Helena.  “Where is Agent Kennedy?”

“I think you can understand why they’d bring him in at night, when less people can see-especially under your current conditions.”

Sheva nodded.  “The local office was… confused, to say the least, when they heard of the plan.”

“So was I,” said Helena, “to be honest.”  She scowled briefly, but kept walking with Sheva.  I’m going to let you know, outright, and I appreciate you not staring—he did these scars.  And he’s still guilty.  I’m not sure…”

“If he is half the agent I’ve heard about, I can trust him and his judgement, even after… what happened.”

“Thank you, Sheva,” said Helena.  She smiled.  “Let’s just make the most of it—we’ll have to persevere.”

“Amen to that.”

 

**3**

Leon looked over the small village, what seemed like shack built upon shack, growing up out of itself.  It had been devastated in 2009 during the Tricell incident, but since then it had rebuilt.  The people there had rebounded, and survived, like a body’s systems repairing itself after a nasty cut.  The only thing was, there was still a scar, a lasting mark in the village, thanks to Tricell’s evil involvement.

Leon was on the top of the few three-story buildings in the village, crouching down so that his large shape couldn’t be seen silhouetted against the clear, starry sky.  He used his night-adapted eyes to scan the perimeter of the village.  Nar every major entrance to the city, B.S.A.A. agents were posted.  According to Sheva, they had been posted there for a while now, but they hadn’t been able to stop or even detect any of the B.O.W.s that must have been causing these attacks.  A couple of people had through it might have been caused by some enhanced Hunter-type B.O.W.s, who had been known to have blended into their environment before, but there was no evidence of the T-Virus left after the attacks, or any of its derivatives.  This had _something_ to do with the C-Virus, because it, other than the traces of the Uroboros that could be found most anywhere in the village and its surroundings, was the only bioweapon agent found at the scenes of the attacks.

Helena had briefed him on the nature of the attacks before he had left for this watch.  Her scars, nasty pink worms across her face, stood out on her skin, and he forced himself not to stare, for her sake.  She hadn’t stared at him.  Not when he’d first become infected, not when he had attacked her, even accidentally.

He had to find whoever was causing this virus to continue to be spread, and he had to stop them.  He had had viruses ruin his life before—the red stain of Raccoon City was still, and walkways would be, on his mind—but the C-Virus had affected him so deeply, so personally, that its eradication meant something _more_ to him.  He was a part of the problem…

That was what he told himself, what Helena told him _not_ to think.  He couldn’t control it—it was the way that he thought.  He looked at himself in the mirrors at the gym—the gym where he had almost _killed_ his closest friend—and he saw what he was.  He was a weapon.  He was a _monster_.

And now, O’Brian wanted to _use_ him as a monster, to take down other monsters.  He would fit right in.  He was happy about that, he’d be able to help—but what was he?  Just a monster.  Just a monster working for the right side.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leon saw some sort of movement.  He slowly moved his head around to see the _thing_ , but it had already disappeared behind one of the low structures on the outskirts of the village.  Leon scanned the structures, eyes tracing the silhouettes of buildings, and soon saw another flash of movement, far along the edge.  He narrowed his eyes.  He crouched down on the roof and pushed upward with his powerful legs, spreading his fleshy wings outward.  He flapped once, pushing himself higher.  Then his wings flapped out, catching the air, and he was able to use them to angle himself down toward his target—down to his prey.

 

**4**

The B.O.W. was entirely unaware of Leon’s approach until he was almost upon him.  Leon made no sound as he attacked from above, claws and teeth bared.  The B.O.W., a sort of grotesque anthropomorphic ankylosaur, turned to face Leon as he attacked, his own, smaller claws bared.  Leon was not hesitant to use his powerful legs to pin down the arms of the B.O.W., keeping it unbalanced on its shelled back, its shorter legs pedaling uselessly in the air.  Leon bared his teeth at first, and was prepared to kill the monster below him.

Then he remembered the real reason that he was there in the first place.  He eased off, letting the other monster get to its feet, even pulling it upward.

“Sorry,” grunted Leon, as the thing brushed itself off.  It stood taller than Leon by a few heads, and the bulk of its mass seemed to be in its armored back and body, with small claws, a bony body, and a terrible-seeming spiked mace of a tail.  Its sleek, pointed snout was spackled with sharp, uneven teeth.

“Vat the hell?” exclaimed the B.O.W.  It bared its teeth.  The Eastern European accent was audible through its deep, guttural growl of a voice.  “I thought _I_ vas the only one out tonight.”

“I thought _I_ vas the only—tonight,” said Leon, his voice, scratchy normally, barely understandable with a fake accent.

“You sound rough,” said the B.O.W.  “You must be new.”  The B.O.W. grunted and turned around.  “They should have told me they were sending fresh blood.  I guess we vill work together.”  It began to speedily, and oddly gracefully, lumber away, along the edge of the village.  Leon hesitated for a moment, and then followed.  He pressed the button on the GPS transmitter that was hidden deep in his pocket.

It was not long before Leon caught up with the other B.O.W.  He said nothing, feigning that he knew the plan, and that he received it from whatever mastermind was behind all of this.  It was not long before they came to a certain, larger shack—whether it was pre-determined or not, Leon couldn’t tell—and the other B.O.W. nodded toward him.

Leon stood, unmoving for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.  Then, realizing that in his ruse, he should have _some_ sort of command, nodded back.  “You… lead,” he grunted with his bad false accent.  The ankylosaur shrugged, its large, armored shoulders heaving.  It turned away from the shack, reared up, and slammed its barb-tipped tail into the ramshackle structure.  It did not take much to knock the place to ruins, and Leon could hear the screams of a few residents inside.  In a split second, he made a decision.

Leon leapt in front of the other B.O.W., taking it by surprise.  He tore at the plywood wall of the shack, sending bits of wood flying.  He spread out his wings, wide, casting a nighttime shadow over all of the destruction.  After a moment of tearing at the building, he found the pocket where a small family, a husband, wife, and three young children.  The children were all crying, and the parents had put their arms around them, eyes wide in fear, their mouths closed—trying to be strong for their children.  Leon tried to make his terrifying, mutated face seem softer for them, but the family seemed no less terrified.

Leon continued to thrash, making like he was causing more damage, throwing debris, so that the B.O.W. behind him would believe in what he was pretending to do.  Meanwhile, he was creating a hole, out of the sight of the ankylosaur, through which the cowering family could escape.  It took them a moment to realize what he was doing, but after a pause, they scrambled out of there, the youngest child looking back at Leon for the briefest of moments with glimmering eyes.

As soon as the family was gone, Leon completely destroyed their home.  Then, he stood up, breaths coming short as he turned back to the other B.O.W.

“Jesus Christ,” murmured the other B.O.W., a twisted and fang-filled smile tugging at its leathery face.  “They’re not fucking around, are they?”  The B.O.W. sized Leon up.  “They’re building you new recruits stronger and stronger.”  It turned away and began to lumber back into the night.  “Come on,” it said, not turning back.  “Let’s report back before the B.S.A.A. shows up.”

Leon glanced at the family, trembling behind another shack a ways away, and turned back, following the other monster away from the village, leaving the destruction behind him.

 

**5**

“And… we’ve got a signal,” said Sheva, turning in her chair and pointing to the monitor.  Helena followed her finger to see a small blip on a topographic map.  “He’s activated his tracker.  We just need to follow him once it’s safe.”  She stood up and caught Helena’s eyes.

“Not that _he’s_ safe,” said Helena.

“You seem to forget that he’s an eight foot tall killing machine,” said Sheva.

“You seem to forget that he’s a B.S.A.A. agent, same as you and me,” said Helena.  “And he’s going into a mission that puts him into severe personal danger.”

“He’s a B.S.A.A. agent, just like you and me,” said Sheva, “which means he knows what he’s doing and can handle himself.”

“I feel _useless_ ,” said Helena.  She sighed and found her way to one of the swivel chairs that stood before the control panel, slumping down into it.  “Leon is my partner, and I’m doing nothing but watching and waiting for him to either be successful, or to get killed.”

“How long have you been with the B.S.A.A.?” asked Sheva, settling down into the other chair, leaning forward toward Helena.

“Not long, I was with the U.S. Anti-Bioterror Force before…”

“Do you notice that there’s somewhat of a high mortality rate of our new recruits?” she asked.  Helena didn’t respond, just looked back at her, wide-eyed.  “It’s not something we particularly advertise, but it’s something that’s true.  We do our best with training, but each time there’s a new bioterror threat out there, a new virus that someone has cooked up, we don’t know how to deal with that new threat.  And a large number of the new recruits, who have never had to adapt to a new situation like this…”

“They don’t make it,” said Helena.  She nodded.

“We don’t send them out there blind,” said Sheva.  “They have training, and weapons—they’re the best at what they do, and they still…”  She shook her head.  “The point is, those who survive, they don’t leave.  They aren’t pushed away by the truth of what this job is.  They’ve survived it once, and they’re going to survive it again.”

“What does this have to do with Leon?”

“Agent Kennedy?” asked Sheva.  She snorted, with a small grin.  “He’s a survivor of the Raccoon City incident, isn’t he?  He took down Las Plagas the first time, and he stopped the T-Veronica virus from spreading in Brazil.  Hell, you were with him in his last two encounters.  He’s a trained man, and one who’s a survivor.  He’s survived then, and he’s going to survive now.”

“And if he…”

“And he knows what he’s getting into, because he’s been there.  He’s been there before, and he’s willingly going back.”

Helena sighed, and looked at the screens for a moment.  “He is going back,” she said.  “He’s going back in there, and God damn it, I’m going back there, too.”  She turned to Sheva.  “How quickly can we get to the spot where he was last transmitting?”

Sheva grinned.  “Fifteen minutes, if we leave now.  And I like the way you think.”

 

**6**

Leon walked behind the B.O.W. down the tunnel, which had obviously been expanded from its original use as a mining shaft.  Both he and the lumbering ankylosaur had plenty of room to get in.  The cave’s entrance was far enough outside of the village that it wasn’t easily fallen upon, but close enough for easy access by the B.O.W.s.  Leon figured that if anyone had come across the entrance, quick work would be made of them so that they would not speak of their findings—or anything else, for that matter—for the rest of their now much shorter lives.

There were no lights in the tunnel, which suited Leon just fine, his virus-enhanced eyes tracing the outlines of his surroundings for him just fine.  The cave sloped slowly downward, and Leon could feel the air growing cooler and damper the further they went from the dry desert surface.

Leon almost walked into the ankylosaur’s shelled back when it stopped, causing it to give a low, snorting laugh.  “First day on the new legs?” it quipped.  As it turned back to him, Leon could see a large metal gate in front of it, held down by electronic lock.  The controls were embedded in the rock to the side of the gate.  The ankylosaur turned to this panel before biting his own tongue between its small but very sharp teeth.  Using one of its clawed fingers, it wiped some tongue-blood on the screen of the wall console.  The screen glowed red, and there was a faint rumbling as the portcullis raised into the rock above, allowing them through.  Leon followed the other B.O.W. through, not turning to watch the gate shut behind them.

There was only a short bit of the tunnel left before it opened up into an enormous cavern.  On the far side was an impress9ve-sized concrete fortress, with slightly rusted steel doors.  This, Leon figured, was left over from Tricell when they set up shop to do experiments here.  Near the middle of the cavern was a small pool of clear water with some vegetation growing around its edge.  Some natural light filtered in from an unseen light source high above.

What Leon was shocked to see, however, was the presence of two things: the familiar flag hanging on the front of the building, and the row of giant glass tubes filled with incubating chrysalises.  In front of these tubes were a few large B.O.W.s, all unique and grotesque, at rest.  One raised a claw in greeting to the ankylosaur and Leon.  The ankylosaur nodded to acknowledge the lopsided B.O.W., and continued on to the base on the opposite side of the cavern, where it rapped on the side with its knuckles.  Then, it stood back for a moment and waited.  After a moment the lights snapped on to the small balcony above, and a door opened with a faint squeal.

Out of the doorway and into the light stepped Svetlana Belikova, looking slightly older but none less powerful than when Leon had last seen her a few years ago in the Eastern Slav Republic.  “My, Sergey,” she said, grinning down at the two B.O.W.s in front of her, “what have you brought to me tonight?”

 

**7**

“Okay,” said Sheva, slowing the Humvee as they moved through the desert, coming to a gradual stop.  “This is about the place where Leon’s GPS tracker stopped working.  The cave must be somewhere around here.”

Helena was already out of the vehicle, looking around their environment.  She tapped the button on the flashlight attacked to her gun holster on her chest and a circle of light illuminated in front of her.  She didn’t see anything except for some scrubby bushes and rocks littering the plain.  Turning, she could see a few lights from the village in the near distance.

Sheva removed the GPS tracker from its mount on the Humvee’s dashboard an, checking it one more time, slid it into a pocket in her cargo paints.  She activated her own flashlight, and went to Helena.  “According to the tracking mechanism, we should be right on top of him,” she said.  “This is where the signal was lost.  If we start here and circle outward, she wouldn’t have too long before we come across the cave.”

“Let’s go,” said Helena, and they began to walk outward in a clockwise direction, carefully avoiding rocks and bushes but not forgetting to shine their flashlights around these obstacles for any hidden entrances to the caves they might have missed.

After a few minutes of searching, Helena whipped her head around, turning the light just after.

“What is it?” asked Sheva.

“Nothing—I thought I heard something.”  She shined the light around.  “There’s nothing there.  Let’s keep going.”

They continued to walk, though Helena found herself to be slightly more hyper-aware of her surroundings, already paranoid about whatever she had just heard.  Her foot struck a pebble, knocking it a few feet away, and her hand was already to her gun before she told herself that it was nothing.  She needed to be aware for _real_ threats, not the ones she invented in her head. She took a deep breath and kept on walking, forcing herself to keep her hand by her side, not at her holster.

When she heard something rustle behind her again, she did not react, because she knew it was just her imagination, or the wind blowing across the mostly sparse desert land.  Sheva, however, turned, her gun already out and at the ready.  “I thought you said there was nothing there?” she said.

“There wasn’t, I couldn’t see anything,” said Helena.  “I’m just being paranoid.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Sheva, not lowering her weapon.  A rustling ahead of them now caught Helena’s ear, and in an instant, her gun was drawn, as well.  Both agents swept the light beams back and forth, searching for whatever was making the noise, but nothing was there.

“What the hell…” started Helena, but before she could say anything else, she was knocked backward by something unseen and landed on her back in the dirt a few yards away.  Sheva turned toward her just to see the flash of something, reflecting the flashlight beam, before it disappeared again.  She rushed to Helena’s side and helped her back to her feet, looking around.

“There’s definitely something here,” said Sheva.

“It’s camouflaging,” said Helena, looking all around her.  “We’re going to have to look for disruptions in our surroundings.”

They stood very still, scanning their environment, and listening more than looking.  There was a faint scuffle, and Helena turned her head.  Sheva saw a shimmer in her flashlight beam, but heard a rustle out to her right.  Both women gripped their guns tight, their fingers hovering over the triggers.

Something struck Sheva’s feet, and she dropped to the ground.  In a semi-conditioned automatic response, both she and Helena fired a few shots into the desert beyond, and something cried out in a high-pitched, distorted squeal.  There was a patch of slimy skin there, pale green and orange for the briefest of moments in the flashlight’s glare, and then it disappeared, leaving nothing but a spatter of thick, dark red blood against the sand.  Sheva got to her feet.

“We can see it if we injure it, for a little while,” said Helena.

“So we don’t let it recover,” said Sheva.  Helena responded with a quick nod and began to turn away when something _whapped_ against her side, knocking her sideways and to one knee.  She fired in the direction that the blow had come from, but her bullets pierced nothing but open air.  Taking her position as an advantage, Helena rested her elbow on her knee and readied her gun for the next attack, pointing it and her flashlight beam out into the open plain.

Sheva listened out, as soon as Helena’s shots had stopped reverberating in the air.  She could hear it moving, sliding against the sandy ground, but she couldn’t pinpoint where the B.O.W. was.  The noise would come from beside her, to her back, and in front, all in the matter of seconds.  It never stayed in one place long enough for her to be able to pinpoint a location and shoot.

The thing came at them both at once, and neither was fully prepared for it.  Something whipped across Helena’s hands, knocking her gun out of them and to the ground.  Sheva was knocked backward, over the other, kneeling agent.  Sheva fired blindly in the direction that she had been shoved from, and splotches of color appeared where the bullets drew blood.  Sheva was on her back, but she managed to get off another shot, revealing a tentacle, whipping back and forth in the air.

“What the hell?” asked Helena, getting to her feet.  She took a step toward Sheva and her gun, but was knocked backward by what must have been another tentacle.  Sheva grabbed the extra gun and fired off a few more shots into the tentacle, which went limp and stayed visible, dragging on the ground.  “Sheva, my gun!”

Sheva turned toward the other agent, who was no longer on the ground at all, but was being lifted into the air by some unseen force.  In the shine of her flashlight, Sheva could see some sort of shine in the darkness.  She tensed for a moment, making sure that she had her aim, and fired a shot just to Helena’s right, causing a spill of blood and a blossom of the sickly green color.  The thing screeched again, but Helena was released, dropped down to the desert dirt.  Sheva jogged over to her and handed her the gun she had dropped before.  As she handed Helena the gun, she was knocked to the ground and dragged backward by her feet.  Turning in the dirt, she fired a few shots into the unseen tentacle that was pulling her.  She could feel the muscles in the appendage loosen on her, but they did not release.  She pulled the trigger again to find that her clip was empty.

Meanwhile, Helena fired a few more shots into the tentacle that had captured her.  She noted the other tentacle that was dragging on the ground, limp and visible from the work Sheva had already done to it.  Following it and the other tentacle that she had just damaged, she began firing at what must have been the central body.

Finding that she wasn’t going to be released by simply kicking, and in too prone of a position to reload her gun, Sheva pulled her body upward and brandished her knife.  She lunged downward at her own feet, slashing at the tentacle that had ahold of her.  The tentacle recoiled, squirming away from her, and blood splashed down over her legs.  She tucked and rolled to the side, stopping in a crouched position.  She sheathed her knife and dropped the empty clip out of her gun, replacing it was a fresh one.

What Helena was firing at was not a tentacle anymore.  The body exposed itself, bullet by bullet.  Helena was knocked backward once, but she fired a shot into the tip of the tentacle and continued her assault on the body.  At one time, the body might have been that of a human being’s, but now it was twisted and distorted, and was the base for at least a dozen asymmetric tentacles, from what Helena could tell.  She searched, as she fired into the body, for a head, a weak spot that she might be able to exploit, but then she realized.

A beak-like mouth was in the middle of what might have once been a torso, screeching in pain and frustration as its body was barraged with bullets.  Around this mouth were four cloudy dark orange spots that Helena figured must have been eyes.  Sheva was up at this point, slashing at the tentacles with one hand, white knuckles standing out against her knife’s grip, and shooting at the central body with Helena with the other.

The thing used the tentacles that weren’t incapacitated all as one, as a wall, interlacing and pulling inward, quickly, pushing Sheva and Helena inward.  They struggled against the vice grip, but to no avail.  “Shit!” exclaimed Sheva, and a shot went off inside of their tentacle prison, causing blood—and Sheva could not tell if it was hers or the B.O.W.’s—to flush hot against their legs.

“The knife!” shouted Helena, and Sheva took a moment to understand what she meant.  “The eyes!  Hit it in the eyes with the knife!”

Sheva was pulled toward the body of the creature, and the constricting limbs began to seriously make it hard for her to breathe.  Her fingers were still tight around her knife, and she forced her arm, slowly but as quickly as she was physically capable, backward and into the body behind her.  The creature let out a muffled cry, but its tentacles did not cease to wrap them, pulling them tighter and tighter…

Both of the agents felt light-headed, their lungs losing their capacity for whatever air they could gasp.  Sheva saw black creeping in on the corners of her vision, and would not allow her grip to relax on the knife.  She pushed her arm downward, trying to re-aim, to find if she could hit the eye.  If she could just hit the eye…

Her vision went dark as her arm weakened, and she wasn’t able to plunge the knife in again.  The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Helena’s head slumping forward against the mostly-visible tentacles.  She gasped a breath…

The tentacles released her, dropping her to the ground, and she was shocked awake in part by the impact and in part by the deathly scream that came from the creature.  She looked upward to see her knife, bloody and buried up to the hilt, sticking out of the B.O.W.’s eye.  She rolled backward, taking note of Helena, still lying motionless on the desert ground, and held up her gun, firing shots into the monster’s other eyes, emptying her clip.  The thing’s tentacles flailed, whipping against the ground and into the air, but Sheva picked up Helena’s gun and emptied it as well, even after the monster had fallen backward in a cloud of dust, leaving its only movements as a twitching in the tips of its tentacles.

Sheva knelt down, putting her boot firmly on the creature, and pulled her knife out of its eye, causing a small spurt of the same thick blood she had smeared down her leg and splattered against most of her.  Once the knife had been wiped on her pants and returned to its sheath, Sheva turned to Helena.

 

**8**

Leon didn’t like this at all.  She was going to know that it was him, that he wasn’t a part of her experiment, that—

“Vun of the new recruits trying a solo mission.”  The ankylosaur shrugged, its shoulders barely moving its massive shelled back.  “He’s got potential.”

“All of my monsters do,” said Belikova, smirking.  Leon’s heart jumped.  She _hadn’t_ recognized him, either as her former foe or as a monster that she herself had not created.

“I must have missed your rebirth,” she said, sneering.  Then, she softened.  “A good mutation, through.”  She nodded, and turned away.  “I will have use for you.”  She walked away from the edge of the balcony and back inside, closing the heavy metal door behind her.  Leon watched her go and wondered how she had escaped persecution after the events of the Eastern Slav Republic, back in 2011.  After what she had done, he was sure that she’d be locked up by the UN for good, releasing bio-organic weapons on her own country’s people.

“Hey, new recruit,” said the ankylosaur, beginning to walk away, toward the other monsters lazing on the other side of the cave.  “Come on.”

Leon followed him, and realized for the first time that he might be in a little over his head.  He was equipped to fight B.O.W.s, and he was equipped to take down the people who created and released them.  However, he had no idea how he was going to manage living among them and trying to pretend he was one of them.  His knowledge of the operation was limited, which meant he had to be very careful about what he said when trying to fit in.

“I don’t remember seeing you around before you transformed,” said the ankylosaur, squatting down in the dirt on all fours, its shell over it like that of a giant turtle’s.  “Vhen did this happen?”

“Recent,” said Leon, keeping his voice scratchy and layered with his bad fake accent.  If he made like he wasn’t able to speak, that might make it easier for him to bluff his way through this thing.

“It isn’t so good that you can’t speak,” said the ankylosaur, settling down, sort of like a cat getting ready for a nap, but large and grotesque.  “Belikova likes it vhen you can respond.  Eh, as long as you can understand commands, I suppose.”

Leon grunted in an affirmative response, and sat down on the floor of the cave next to the other B.O.W.s, folding his wings up behind him and around his shoulders.

“I hated tearing apart the last set of unlucky bastards that lost their minds vhen they came out of it,” said the B.O.W.  Its head was resting on its arms now, and its eyelids barely let slits of its eyes be visible.  It was falling asleep.  “After volunteering and everything, a shitty vay to go.”

Leon didn’t have to respond to this, as the B.O.W. was already asleep.  Some of the other monsters, of which Leon counted seven or eight, depending on whether or not one of them was a two-headed beast or not, were asleep as well, and some were simply lazing.  None were doing anything that would indicate their awakedness.  Leon figured that his best bet was to feign sleep until the next time something worthwhile happened, to blend in—if he was the only B.O.W. up and awake, he would draw unwanted attention.  So he closed his eyes almost all the way, and pretended to sleep.

 

**9**

Helena woke up and coughed a bit, her sides aching with a sharp pain as she did.  The moment she made a sound, Sheva was over her, pushing back on her shoulder as she tried to sit up.  “Easy there, Agent,” she said, eying Helena’s body language.  “We were both crushed pretty hard, and I need to make sure you’re okay before you sit up.  I cracked a few ribs myself.”

“I feel like I’m still wrapped up when I breathe,” said Helena, wheezing a bit as she did.  “Damn it.”

“I’m going to run my fingers down your ribcage—let me know what hurts.”

“Ow!”

“Yeah, I figured so,” said Sheva.  After a few more ribs and a few more winces from Helena, Sheva nodded, and placed her hand under Helena’s shoulder blade, gently helping her up into a sitting position.  “You’re going to be fine,” she said, “just a few cracked ribs.  You can breathe fine, right?”  Helena nodded.  “As long as you’re not tasting any blood, you should be okay.”

“I better be okay,” said Helena, beginning to stand up before Sheva could stop her.  She tried not to wince at the pain coming from her ribs.  “Because I’m not going back to the base now.  I’m going after Leon.”

“We can get other agents…”

“You can call in for backup,” said Helena, checking her gun and scanning her environment, “but I’m not waiting that long.”  The body of the B.O.W. lay visible to her side, blood in a tacky pool below it.  She wandered over to it and prodded it with her boot.  “Judging by this asshole, we’re close to the cave entrance.”

“Too close for comfort, it seems,” said Sheva in agreement.

“The B.O.W. is a C-Virus type, that’s for sure, but I haven’t seen this type of mutation before.  What we’re dealing with is on a whole new level.”

“And it’s easy to see how they’ve gone undetected,” said Sheva.  “That thing was fast, and it could camouflage.”

“Sheva, come here,” said Helena.  She had made it to the other side of the B.O.W., where a few low shrubs had grown together into a slightly larger vegetative pile.  She gestured at the thing, and Sheva came closer, shining her light.  Below the leaves of the bushes was not the sand she would have expected, but a hole that led downward.

“I suppose we found what we’re looking for,” said Sheva.  She took a breath and turned to Helena, intending to check if she really wanted to do this one more time.  She changed her mind once she saw the woman’s face, set and determined to face whatever was awaiting them down in the tunnels.  Sheva nodded to her, and they picked their way through the brush carefully, as not to get tangled up in it, and began their descent into the underground.

 

**10**

Leon awoke, not realizing until then that he had dozed off at all.  He was still underground, his chin resting against his chest, sitting next to the other assembled B.O.W.s.  All of the others, at this point, seemed to be asleep.  This was hard to tell, because some of their mutations left them without an identifiable face or head part of their body.  Carefully, he raised himself up to his feet, and scanned the cave.

There didn’t seem to be any activity from the B.O.W.s as he moved, and there was no other indication throughout the cave that anyone or anything had noticed him awakening.  He stepped forward, where moonlight was filtering downward through the hole somewhere in the ceiling of the cave.  The small pool in the center of the cavern was slightly illuminated, the light of the moon shimmering off of its nearly still surface.  Leon fixed his eyes on the bunker set into the back wall of the cavern, the one that had the flag of the former Eastern Slav Republic hanging from the balcony.  He knew that Svetlana had slipped under the U.N.’s radar, but he hadn’t had her at the front of his mind since the bioterror attacks in 2013.  That she would try something as drastic as B.O.W.s made with the C-virus didn’t seem too far out of her capabilities, but that it would be on such a scale after her international disgrace.

He found that he was standing directly in front of the bunker now, staring up at the balcony where he had seen her appear earlier.  He would have to be smart if he wanted to get in with her.  She had successfully orchestrated a civil war in her own country in order to join the United Nations, and almost got away with it.  He would have to be careful, but above all he had to make sure that she didn’t realize he wasn’t one of her designs.  He had to be sure she didn’t recognize him.

“Agent Kennedy,” came a voice from above him.  Leon’s heart stopped in his chest, and he looked slowly upward to the balcony.  Svetlana Belikova, dressed in a smart blue pantsuit that seemed anathema to the dank surroundings, gazed down at him.  “I was wondering when you would come to me.”

“I—how the hell did you…”

“I _control_ my monsters, Agent Kennedy, and if you were mine, you wouldn’t be awake right now.”   She paused.  “Did you really think that I wouldn’t notice a new B.O.W.?”  Svetlana smirked, stepping carefully across her balcony, keeping eye contact with Leon.  “You vastly underestimate your stature, Agent Kennedy.  You destroyed my country, do you not remember that?”

“You destroyed your country,” said Leon, the gravelly voice grinding its way out of his throat, even without the phony accent affecting it.

“I was building a better place for my citizens, and I was doing what I had to in order to do that.  You were simply a terrorist.”  Her hands gripped the railing of her balcony, and she forced herself to relax them, standing back up to her full height.  “It doesn’t matter.  The Eastern Slav Republic, what it used to be, is over, and it is no longer of any consequence to me.”

“What the hell do you want, then?” asked Leon, baring his teeth and spreading his wings a bit more to seem more imposing.

“I want the same thing I’ve always wanted,” said Belikova, a slight curl in her tone.  “I want to seize power.  I want to succeed where I have already failed.  I want to create a new prosperous country, rising out of the ashes of some terrible attack…”  She paced, and stopped.  “I will be the savior of these people.”

“The people who live here are rebuilding.  They don’t need some savior…”

“And yet, you’re here, aren’t you?”  She smirked.  “And you think that you can survive just because what you’re doing is right, but you’re the same kind of monster that I have been using…”

“You are using them against the people you claim to save.”

“And where do you think I get the volunteers in order to create these creatures?  Are they not as rational as you?”  She was back at the railing now, and he could feel her eyes boring down into his own.  “Some of them came with me from the Eastern Slav Republic, yes, they were the first, but the others… They knew what they were getting into.  They weren’t mere cannon-fodder.  They were something more.  They were the first recruits to my new Republic.”

“You—want to…”

“Think of a new society, run entirely by the B.O.W.s that swear their undying allegiance to _me._   Who would dare oppose the country full of willing monsters?  And what moral stand would the B.S.A.A. take, given that they’re using their own monsters now, too?

Leon took a step back, his intimidating façade temporarily broken.  “You…  Why are you telling me this?”

“I needed to stall.  To get everyone into position.”

Leon’s head swiveled, and he could see the other B.O.W.s were standing around him in a circle, their claws and teeth bared, ready to strike at the moment’s command.  His eyes went back to Belikova’s.  “You’re not going to get away with this.”

“Oh, no, I don’t expect to get away with this today.  It will take time.  Time, I have, Agent Kennedy.  It seems, however, it is something that you don’t.”  She nodded down to one of the B.O.W.s—Leon thought it might have been the ankylosaur who had originally brought him in—and he didn’t see anything else from Belikova.  The monsters descended on him.

 

**11**

“Shit, it’s locked,” said Helena, after a moment or two of pulling at the bars.  She tried pulling, pushing, and sliding them both up and down, but they wouldn’t move, and all she got out of her endeavors were some more pains in her chest.

“Settle down,” said Sheva, from the control panel at the wall.  The screen glowed a soft blue, and when she touched it, it did not react, but there were no other buttons or controls.  “I found the control panel, but I think it might be some sort of a scanner.”

“Well, we don’t have whatever it does need to scan,” said Helena.  “I mean, what could it scan?”

“It could scan a fingerprint, or a retina,” said Sheva.

“Maybe, it this was a normal kind of enemy,” said Helena, “but we’re dealing with B.O.W.s that are able to operate on their own, with a certain amount of autonomy.  That means that if they want to get in and out of here freely, it would have to be something that they could all scan.  You remember the thing that we fought out there.  There’s no damn way that it had anything remotely like a fingerprint, and there’s also no way that it had any retinas, either.  I mean, its eyes were-weird.  If they even were eyes, that is.”

“So what might this thing scan?” asked Sheva, frowning.  “This seems to be too new to be3 left over from Tricell, and there’s no way that it was Wesker’s, was it?  I mean, he didn’t need this type of security, with Tricell’s defenses already in place, coupled with his B.O.W.s…”

“It’s just evidence that we’re on the right track,” said Helena.  She and Sheva searched around for some other sort of clue that might tell them how the B.O.W.s were getting the lock open, but there was nothing in the cave but rock, the panel, and the bars of the gate themselves.

Helena felt a pain in her side as she moved and shifted the cracked ribs.  She put a hand to her side, knowing that it wouldn’t help, but willing to try anyway.  She noticed, perhaps for the first time, that she was covered with splotches of thick blood that was not her own.  The blood had come from the B.O.W. when they had been taking out its arms.

“Sheva!” she said, moving over to the scanner and not letting the pain bother her.  “I’ve got it!”  She placed her hand on the scanner.

“Wait, what if it sets off an alarm…”  Sheva was cut off as the bars of the gate slid upward, leaving the cave path clear for them.  Helena started through, wiping her hand on her paint leg.  “What did you do?” asked Sheva, following her through.

“It’s the blood,” said Helena, holding her hand in the circle of light that came from her chest-mounted flashlight.  Red was smeared across her palm.  “The scanner looks for C-Virus infected blood.”

“And we’re covered in it,” said Sheva, wiping some off of her upper arm.

“I think we’ll be fine,” said Helena, “but this just means…”

She was cut off by the sound of the gate sliding back into place.  With no scanner on this side of it, there did not seem to be a chance of going back, now.  The women looked at it, and back at each other.  “…that we’re in.”  Together, they turned back down the hallway and began to move.

 

**12**

Leon came to in the dark, and it took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to it, mutated for dark conditions as they were.  He attempted to stand from his sitting position, but found that his hands and feet were bound with chains.  He tried to move his wings, but found them to be held down by a large rock each, enough that he wouldn’t be able to move them unless he could stand up and lift the rocks with his arms.  There didn’t seem to be any guard watching over him, whether in the form of other B.O.W.s or humans.  There only seemed to be one exit from the cavern he was sitting down in, so Belikova must have been pretty sure of its security.

Looking down at the way he was chained up, he wondered why they hadn’t been killed by the large group of B.O.W.s when they had attacked him.  He could feel soreness in his body, but the C-Virus was doing a good job of dulling it for him, patching him back up.  That was an advantage, to being a monster.

He wondered what Helena was doing, without any surveillance of him.  He figured that the GPS device he was crying would not work in the cave, but she would have known where he had gone underground.  Maybe she had followed him.  If she had, Leon hoped that she had convinced Sheva to allow her to bring a large force with her.  She would need it, were she going to rescue him and take down Svetlana’s horde of B.O.W.s.

His eyes went to his chained claws, and he felt a sinking in his chest.  Those were the claws that left Helena with the pink scars down her neck and face; they were the claws that meant that she would be deformed for the rest of her life.  And these people, they were willing giving themselves up to this.  They were allowing themselves to become the monsters that Leon was trying so hard not to let himself become.  He wondered if that mean they were more of monsters than even the accidentally infected were—than he was.

And what of the B.S.A.A.?  Belikova had pointed out something that he had thought of before, but not in such detail.  What moral authority did the B.S.A.A. have in using B.O.W.s like him to fight bioterror?  Wasn’t that hypocritical?  How did they have the higher ground to stop people like her from using B.O.W.s when they were doing the same thing?

Leon tried to strain against his chains, but they still did not budge.  The people who captured him were monsters like him.  They knew how to deal with him.  He rubbed at his wrists, where the chains would have been creating sores on human skin.  This was probably not the first time that they had to chain up a disobedient B.O.W. in their experiments to create sentient servants as they had.

This brought Leon back to the reason that he was still alive, rather than killed by the monsters when Belikova had commanded them earlier.  What might they want with him, that they would not have left him to bleed out on the floor, gored to death by other B.O.W.s?  Would they try to get him to work with them, or would they use him to create B.O.W.s like him?  If they tried to use him as their own, would he be able to resist them?  Had they been able to tame feral B.O.W.s, what match would he make for their techniques?  He shuddered, the chains clinking absently against each other as he did.  The rocks holding down his wings felt more and more uncomfortable, digging into the flesh.  They weren’t pushed down any more, they simply filled his consciousness more as he forced himself to stop thinking about the possibilities of his capture.  He had almost been under the control of an evil cult leader before, and he wasn’t going to entertain himself with thoughts of it again.

He could only hope that Helena and Sheva and their relief team would be there soon, with heavy firepower.  Because that would be their only chance of making it out of there alive.  It might be the only chance of the entire country making it out of this alive.

 

**13**

“Okay, how much do we have left?” asked Helena as Sheva popped the clip back into her gun.  “How screwed are we?”  They were standing at the edge of the large cavern, Helena’s eyes going to the B.O.W.s and Sheva’s going to the concrete fortress that was built into the wall.

“We have a full round here, and I think I’ve got an extra clip,” said Sheva.  “You?”

“Just what’s left in the gun,” said Helena.  “A couple of shots, if I get lucky.”

“We’re going to have to make it count, then,” said Sheva.  She peered over at the B.O.W.s.  “There’s a lot of them,” she said.  “We can’t take them out with what we have.”

“If we get across to the bunker over there,” said Helena, “maybe there’s some more firepower.  Think about it—whoever is running this would have to have a backup plan in case something… went wrong.

“I assume you have one of those with Agent Kennedy?”

The question hung in the air, and Helena’s face became solid as stone, unmoving.  Sheva started to say something, but Helena had already started off toward the other side of the caver, careful to stay away from the pool in the center, a quiet dash.  If any of the B.O.W.s noticed, they didn’t make any indication that they had.  Sheva took a deep breath and dashed out after Helena.  She could see the bit of light filtering down from above as she rounded the pool.  To her dismay, so did the GPS transmitter she was carrying.  Able to find signal finally, it beeped a few times to alert Sheva that she was within 100 meters of the transmitter.  This beeping echoed against the walls of the caver, bouncing and amplifying the sound, and alerting the B.O.W.s of their presence.

“Run!” shouted Sheva, pushing forward toward Helena, who had frozen at the sound.  The two of them sprinted forward, not looking back to the B.O.W.s that were now bounding toward them, straining for the concrete building set into the back wall of the cavern.

“What the hell?” asked Helena, but Sheva did not stop to see what she was talking about.  In one fluid motion, she got on one knee and cupped her hands.  Helena stepped into them and Sheva gave her a great boost upward, to the landing where she grabbed onto the steel railing.  Once she had gotten up, she reached down to Sheva, yanking her up, all while ignoring the pain screaming from her ribs.  As soon as Sheva was up onto the balcony, the women dashed for the door.  Helena rushed through, but Sheva paused in the doorframe.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, her heart pounding in her chest.

“They’re not following us,” said Sheva.

“What?”

Helena joined Sheva back at the door and looked down from the balcony.  The gaggle of monsters had halted ten feet from the front of the building, none of them straying even an inch closer than some unseen line.

“What the hell?”

“I don’t know,” said Sheva, turning and coming into the door.  Helena closed it behind them.  “But I intend to find out.”

 

**14**

“Now, Mr. Kennedy, I hope you realize that I do have ways of getting what I want.”  Svetlana stood in front of the entrance to Leon’s prison-cavern.  In her hand was a large leather bag.  She grinned.  “I have become somewhat proficient at _taming_ disobedient bioweapons,” she said.  “And in the end, that’s all you really are—another bioweapon to be _tamed_.”  She stepped closer to him, and set the bag on the ground.  Leon lunged at her with both of his claws outstretched, still chained together, but he was jerked back by his wings.  The rocks on top of them held him down, and Svetlana had calculated exactly how fat he would go.  He realized this when he collapsed on the ground, splayed in front of her, and she acted quickly.

She reached into her bag, grabbing something about the same shape and size as a relay baton, and struck it against the rock floor of the cave before sticking it directly against the back of Leon’s neck.  The pain was instant and _searing_.  He howled and tried to jerk away, but something was holding him down, paralyzing him from within.

“You don’t think I’ve researched B.O.W.s created by the C-virus before my experiments with it?  I _know_ the virus’s weaknesses.”  She twisted her wrist slightly, pushing the road flare, still burning, harder into the back of Leon’s neck.  “And I know how to exploit them.”  With the hand she wasn’t using to press the flare into Leon’s skin, she lifted his chin.  Their eyes met, Leon’s slightly squinted against the horrific pain.  “You noticed the sensitive sacs along your spine?  They’re the center of the virus’s control, where it first spread through your body.  These sacs are sensitive, particularly to _flame_.”  The road flare continued to burn Leon’s skin, causing it to sizzle and pop, blood bubbling and skin peeling back from where Belikova held it.

“I’m going to pop every fucking sac until I break you,” she said, her tone never faltering, her eye contact maintained.  “I’m interested to see how many it will take.”  She pressed the flare in harder and dropped Leon’s head.  The flare sputtered, at least an inch deep into Leon’s flesh, and went out.  Leon gasped for breath and watched as Svetlana tossed the flare aside, going to retrieve another from her bag.  He tried to get up, but the pain coming from his fresh burn wound—which was deep and oozing with a half-bloody lymph substance—wouldn’t let him even let him lift his head.  All he could see were her feet as she reapproached him, and could hear as she struck the flare against the rock floor.  He tried to brace himself, but when the road flare was buried between his shoulder blades, his vision blurred and all strength fled from his muscles.  He howled, but Belikova did not relent.  His scream echoed off of the rock walls, but it was not so much of a scream as it was a primal animal yowl.  Leon wasn’t able to tear his mind away from the pain long enough the ponder whether that hurt him more than the flare itself.

 

**15**

The hallway was grey and concrete and largely unremarkable.  Some metal—old, and rusting—doors branched off to either side.  Helena laughed with a half breath.  "Pick a door," she said, leaning against the wall slightly.

Sheva went to the door closest to them on the left.  She turned the knob and, apart from briefly sticking in the frame, the door swung open easily.  She went in, gun up, and Helena followed, her gun at the ready as well.

The room was dark, but the flashlights on Helena's chest and Sheva's gun illuminated some spotlights as they swung them back and forth across the room.  The opposite wall was nothing but a stack of monitors, framing grainy shots of the entire cavern and facility.  There was a shot of the front of the bunker, where they could see the monsters still in the cavern, looking at the balcony and the door the agents had disappeared into.

"She must have been watching the whole time," said Sheva.

"Who must have?" asked Helena.

"Svetlana Belikova," said Sheva, glancing deeper at the video screens for a moment.  "The former President of the Eastern Slav Republic."

"Didn't she get taken down a few years ago?"

"But she was never captured," said Sheva, pointing on the video screen to the Eastern Slav Republic flag that hung on the front of the bunker.  "And I think we just found where she's been hiding out."

They stood in silence for a moment, watching the screens.  "We'll need more bullets, then," said Helena.

Sheva nodded, and the two of them turned from their screens.  Back into the hallways, they moved to the next door, a much more ornate, polished wood door.  Helena tried the handle.  "It's locked," she said.

"Let's try the others and come back if we need to," said Sheva.  "That's probably where _she_ hides."

The moved on down the hallway to another plain metal door.  Sheva tried the handle and found that it gave a little, but stuck in the doorjamb.  Sheva squared up her shoulder and threw her weight into the door.  As the door burst open, Helena caught sight of the red laser pointed down at them and tackled Sheva to the ground, just as a few bullets ripped through where her head was just a moment before.

“Holy shit,” uttered Sheva.  Helena rolled off of her, groaning at the throbbing in her torso.  As she did, she drew her gun and fired a few shots into the sentry gun mounted in the ceiling, sending sparks and ac bit of shrapnel flying.  After these few shots, she was dry firing, her clip empty.  It was enough, though, and the mangled robot didn’t fire on them again.

“This’d better be the arsenal,” said Helena, ejecting the empty clip.

“It’s your lucky day,” said Sheva, standing and going to one of the shelves against the wall in the dark room.  From it, she plucked a small box, which she tossed to Helena.  The small cardboard box was full of bullets.

“Thank God,” said Helena.  “It’s about time we caught a break.”  She began filling her clip with bullets from the box.  “What else is in here?”

Sheva tried the light switch for the room, but there was a spark and nothing more when she flipped it.  During the brief shootout with the security drone on the ceiling, the lightbulb had exploded.

“Great,” said Sheva, angling her flashlight around the room.  “Take a look at this,” said Helena, pointing her chest mounted light at the large rocket launcher mounted on the back wall.

“It’s terrifying how she got this into the country,” said Sheva, reloading her own gun.

“It’s a little big,” said Helena.  She looked away, going to some of the other shelves.  “But with all these guns along with all those monsters, you’ve got to wonder what the hell she was planning here…”

“We need to get into her office, or whatever that door was,” said Sheva.  “We need to know what we’re up against.”

Helena nodded, shoving a few extra clips into her pockets.  She tossed a few grenades to Sheva.  “These might be useful, too.”  Sheva gave her a small grin.  She clipped the grenades onto her belt and grabbed a few extra clips herself before hollowing Helena out to the other door, the ornate wooden on the that was locked.

“And how are we going to get in?” asked Sheva.  “Should we shoot the lock?”

Helena grinned and held forth a small explosive covered in a sort of putty.  Sheva grinned, as well.  “I’m telling you,” said Helena as she stuck the digital device to the space just above the door handle, “Belikova knows how to outfit and armory.”  She hit the small button on the device, and the two agents hurried back into the armory for cover.  After a moment, there was a sharp _bang_ and the sound of splintering wood.

They came out from their cover and found the part of the door around the handle to be splintered and scattered around on the floor.  With a light push, the door detached itself from the bit that was still stuck in the lock and swung inward.  Sheva and Helena stepped carefully inside.

The room was a study, with an ornate couch and a large, imposing desk, along with a Persian rug and bookshelves against the wall.  Opposite the desk area was a large bed, recessed in the back of the room, but adorned with thick, rich covers.  The two agents crept inside, their boots crunching over the fragments of wood left on the floor.  Helena went to the desk right away, shuffling through files on the top and through the shelves.  They contained numbers, data, and personnel sheets, from both before and after their C-viral transformations.

Sheva wandered to the bed, glancing at the covers, pulled up in a neat fashion.  Sitting on top of the high thread-count pillowcases was a thin laptop computer.  She picked it up and opened it.

There was no passcode entry—apparently, Belikova must have been confident in the security of her base.  The B.O.W.s would definitely not have been stooping, the way that they recoiled from the balcony before, as if they were trained.  And they admittedly did have very tough security.

On the screen as a plain black wallpaper on the desktop, layered with open document windows.  Sheva skimmed through them, minimizing them as she read the headlines.

“Las Plagas and Hierarchy of Control”

“Implications of C-virus Control”

“Bio-Organic Weaponry and the International Response”

“Latest Viral Development”

“Certain Terrorist Groups Organizing B.O.W.s in Attacks”

She paused on the last one, remembering the way that the resistance in the Eastern Slav Republic would use Las Plagas in order to control T-infected B.O.W.s.  She minimized the article to reveal the last window, a word processing document left open.  Sheva maximized the window and peered closer to it, scrolling back up and beginning to read.

“What’d you find there?” asked Helena.  “She kept good files, but there’s nothing really useful over here.”

“She’s training them,” said Sheva.  Her eyes stayed flued to the screen, her eyes flicking back and forth as she read the document.  Helena crossed to her and looked over her shoulder at the document.  “She kept meticulous records of all of the things she does to keep the B.O.W.s in compliance.”

“What do you mean?”

“She started with the base idea of the Plaga controlling the T-virus, as was the case in the B.O.W.s she had secretly sold to the revolutionaries in her home country.”  She paused, reading.  “Then, she reasoned that the C-virus might react in a similar way to something else.  It’s hard to tell what she was trying to say here, but it gets down to the spirit’s resilience.  Something about ‘lesser beings’—and I think she’s talking about the Plaga there—and how their level of control can be mastered.  Something about Pavlov, Erikson…  She’s—I don’t’ know how right now, but somehow—she’s controlling the B.O.W.s.”

Helena and Sheva stood still for a moment in silence, looking at each other, and then to the floor.  The information weighed on them.  “What they had in Eastern Slav—They had T-viral B.O.W.s and they caused a ton of trouble.  What would they do with fully sentient C-virus B.O.W.s?”

“Are they really as sentient as we’d think?” asked Sheva.  The question didn’t get a chance to be answered, because at that moment, the air was split by a scream.  Sheva dropped the computer and the two of them rushed into the hall.

They dashed forward, but the two of them stopped moving when they heard a guttural scream reverberate through the concrete walls of the underground bunker.  They looked to each other, and know without speaking that the scream must have come from Leon.  They both took off down the hallway toward the source of the sound.  They passed closed door, some of them an old metal type, with peeling gray paint, others stronger reinforced doors that seemed to impose.  Helena wondered, as she ran past them, if the reinforced doors were an addition of the bunker’s more recent owner.

Helena pumped her arms, running so fast that she almost dumped herself down a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway.  They went both up and down, but Sheva immediately began to descend, in the direction of Leon’s screams.  Helena followed her, feeling the reverberations of the metal stairs as they descended as quickly as they could.

There were two flights of stairs, in the space that there would normally be two stories, before they reached a door at the bottom.  Sheva held there, waiting for both Helena and herself to catch their breaths.  Then,  she eased the door open slowly, both of them holding their guns at the ready.

Beyond the door was a narrow cave, about the size of a normal hallway.  It was not unlike the caves they had come into the underground system through.  The scream came again, louder this time, and Helena could hear the _agony_ in it.  Sheva took the lead again, creeping quickly down toward the noise.  The cave had a slight curve in it, and opened up to a small cavern with a high ceiling.  In the center of it, below the ledge they were standing on that the came hallway opened to, was Leon, spread out on the floor, his wings pinned down by large rocks.  A woman bent over him, holding a flare into his face.  A spattering of used-up flares were scattered against the ground.

Faced with this scene, Helena readied her gun and fired a shot into the woman’s shoulder before she even realized that they were there.

“Arugh!” she cried, falling forward and dropping the flare.  Blood blossomed quickly round the bullet hole in the shoulder of her suit jacket.  She turned, eyes wild, to the two agents who stood—though Helena felt the recoil from her shots in her ribs something awful—resolute, guns trained on her.

“Svetlana Belikova.  I am Agent Sheva Alomar of the B.S.A.A., and you are under arrest for multiple violations of international anti-bioterror statutes…”

Before Sheva could finish, Belikova ducked to the side, rolling across the stone floor.  Helena let off a shot that buried itself in the ground where Svetlana had just been, kicking up flecks of rock and dust as it did.  The former president reached into her jacket pocket in the same fluid motion, pulling out a remote and pressing a button before getting to her feet and sprinting to the opposite wall.  This wall was opening, shifting open like a garage door.  Belikova tucked and rolled under it as it opened.

Sheva dropped down from the ledge and sprinted over to the door, which was now to about head height.  She ducked under, glanced around, and came back into the cavern.  As she did, Helena carefully lowered herself down from the ledge—it greatly pained her ribs as she went—and rushed over to Leon, who was groaning on the floor.  Blood was spilling from the mangled and burned part of his face—directly in his right eye, which seemed to be nothing now but a socket of pus—and he was barely able to lift his face to her.

“This opens to the big cavern,” said Sheva, standing above Helena and Leon.  Her gun was not raised, but her hands were tense on it.  “I didn’t see Belikova, but I have a bad feeling about what’ll happen if she wakes up her gang.”

“We need to get Leon out of here,” said Helena.  “He needs a doctor, now.  The C-virus can heal him, but it has a particular weakness to fire…”  Helena looked away from Leon’s mangled face and winced, her ribs a constant ache with intermittent sharp pricks.  Her eyes lingered on the deep burned gouges in the lumps that went down Leon’s spine-ridge, their usual soft orange color matted over with half-coagulated blood.  “That bitch knew exactly what she was doing.”

“She… wanted control…” uttered Leon, barely able to keep his head up long enough to get the words out.  Sheva, from her standing position, noted the popped virus-sacs along his spine as well, looking away quickly.

“She did this to control you?” asked Helena.  She looked up to Sheva, making brief eye contact before continuing.  “Doesn’t she know you’re too proud for that?”  She placed her hand on his shoulder.  “Hell, you defied orders and used your vacation to take her out before…”  She realized her humor wasn’t helping at all.  She turned to Sheva.

“Before we’re ambushed, can we get the boulders off of his wings?”

Sheva nodded and moved quickly to the boulder on his right wing.  Sheva crouched down, careful not to place her large boots on his skin as it was spread out.  Helena stepped forward to help, but Sheva held up a hand.  “No,” she said, “you don’t need to hurt yourself more than you already are.”  She readied her shoulder against the rock and looked to Helena again.  “This will probably hurt him.  Keep him conscious.”  Helena nodded, and Sheva shoved against the boulder.  She used her leverage to move it a half a foot.  As she did, it rolled over onto more of his wing, crushing _it_ and eliciting another groaning scream from Leon.  Helena placed a hand on his shoulder, hesitated, feeling the twitchings of pain in the muscles there, and placed her hand on his bloody cheek, careful of his tender wound,

Sheva tried again, pushing carefully but firmly, rolling it off of the wing and onto the stone ground.  There was an ugly red sore spot where the boulder was placed, surrounded by a purplish-yellow bruise.  She glanced over her shoulder to the open cavern, where the small pool in the center shimmered gently.  The B.O.W.s weren’t there, and that made Sheva nervous.  The quietness, the anticipation—that was what got her heart pounding.  She forced herself to turn from the open-door wall, and back to Leon.  There was another boulder on his other wing, and it had to be moved before they could get anything else done.

Sheva got down and began to push the rock off of Leon’s wing.  Helena watched as she did, being carefully to tenderly comfort him and not aggravate any of his wounds.  Her eyes traced the oozing holes in his back, half-cauterized and all painful.  He cringed as Sheva shoved against the rock, half-rolling, half-scraping it against his wing.

Helena’s head snapped upward when a screech reached her eyes from above.  Falling toward them, with large claws bared, was a six-armed B.O.W. from an unseen cave offshoot above.  Helena reached for her gun, but she didn’t have time to ready it before she had to roll out of the way.  The B.O.W. stood between her and Leon.  It made eye contact with Helena and released a screech again.  Helena scrambled backward, feeling the blunt daggers of pain stab into her ribs.  The B.O.W. did not come after her, though—it turned toward Sheva, who still had her shoulder in the rock to push.

Helena reached for her gun just as another B.O.W. dropped down almost on top of Sheva, who jumped backward out of the way.  Sheva pulled up her gun as she sprinted toward Helena, firing a few shots into the back of the B.O.W. that had almost taken her out.  She snatched Helena, who hadn’t yet made a move, around the waist and yanked her away.  She boosted her in the same movement up onto the ledge from which they had come.

“No, Sheva!” shouted Helena as her partner pushed herself up next to her.  “We can’t leave him…”

“Triage, for now,” said Sheva, jerking Helena on a little too roughly for her ribs, and she cried out.  This was better than the alternative, though, because the razor-clawed B.O.W. slashed in that moment at the space Helena had just previously occupied.

“We can’t just leave him!” exclaimed Helena as Sheva led her down the cave hallway.  The B.O.W., slightly bigger than the cave was, was gnashing after them.

“We’ll go back for him,” said Sheva.  “I’ve got an idea.”  She held the metal door to the stairway open for Helena, and then slammed it shut once she was through, locking it shut with the crossbar as she did.

 

**16**

Sheva led Helena back through the hall, and when they reached the armory, they ducked inside.  “What is your end game?” asked Helena, as she pulled the heavy door shut behind them.  “We have to get back, we have to help him, we…”

“We’re _going_ to help him,” said Sheva.  She squatted down a bit and hefted upward, pulling the rocket launcher from its secured position on the back wall.  The mechanism clicked when Sheva removed the rocket launcher, and both of the agents tensed in anticipation of some sort of trap.  The destroyed turret sputtered a little, dropping some sparks downward, and was still.  Sheva let out a sigh of relief, and went to the door.

“There’s only one way to take out all these B.O.W.s at once,” said Sheva.

“What about Leon?” asked Helena.  She reached out and caught Sheva by the arm.  Sheva allowed herself to be stopped.  “He’s down there with the rest of them.”

Sheva didn’t reply for a moment.  She glanced down at the rocket launcher in her hands.  “It’s the only chance of saving him.  And I’m going to take that chance.”

She pulled her arm free of Helena’s grip and opened the door to the hall.  She turned back.  “Are you coming?”

Helena took a deep breath, paining her ribs as she did, and nodded, following after Sheva into the hall at a light jog.  The B.O.W.s were attacking Leon down below, but Helena wondered where Svetlana had gone, since she was still at large.  _One problem at a time_ , she thought as she kept on down the hall, toward the open door at the end.  She didn’t like the idea of using the rocket launcher near Leon, not in his condition.  If he died, it would—

She shook her head and tightened her hand around the grip of her gun.  She was close on Sheva’s tail, even with the throbbing pain in her side, and because she was so close, she was doubly surprised when the fancier wooden door broke open and Belikova launched herself at Sheva, knocking her into the opposite wall, the rocket launcher falling out of her hands onto the floor a few feet away.

Svetlana pulled back her fist and slammed it into Sheva’s cheek, knocking her head sideways.  Helena raised her gun, and Sheva called out: “No!  I’ll handle her!”  She pushed the woman backward into the bedroom office.  She turned back to Helena.  “Go save Leon!”  Then, she ran after Svetlana, catching her with a lowered shoulder and sending her to the ground.

Helena froze for a moment, her eyes moving from the doorway to the rocket launcher on the ground.  She then leapt into action, stooping down to pick up the rocket launcher—which was heavier than she’d expected it to be—and she pushed onward, toward the metal door at the end of the concrete hallway.  She heard the sounds of Sheva struggling behind her, but she kept on.  In her current state, she would be more detriment than help to her partner, and Sheva could hold her own.  Plus, someone had to save Leon.

She burst the door open and stepped out onto the balcony.  She turned to the left to see the open cavern where the B.O.W.s—there were more of them now, all grotesque and vicious, claws and tentacles—were tearing at Leon.  She could not even see him, behind the monstrosities attacking him.

She lifted the rocket launcher to her shoulder, grunting as she did.  She aimed, steadied herself, and exhaled a deep breath slowly, trying to put the least amount of pressure on her ribs that she possibly could.

Then, she fired.

The B.O.W.s were blown apart, blood splattering against the walls of the side-cavern and across the floor of the main cavern.  Hunks of flaming flesh simmered and a few more intact B.O.W.s lay almost still, clutching wounds.

From as far away as she was, Helena couldn’t tell Leon’s state.  He was mixed up in all of the gore.

She dropped the rocket launcher to the ground.  She looked at the bloody, flaming mess she had caused, and she turned back down the hallway.  She was running—not a jog, but a _full run_ , and she pushed herself even though it hurt to breathe, like two axes whacking her in her sides every time she took a stride.

She passed the office, where Sheva and Svetlana were still fighting, locked in a fierce competition of blows.  Helena did not stop to help or to observe.  She flung open the door at the end the hallway, taking the stairs downward, two at a time.  She winced every time her feet collided with the ground, but she pushed forward nonetheless.

She pulled out her gun as she pushed down through the cave-hall at the bottom of the stairwell, and when she met with the bleeding, pained B.O.W. that had originally tried to chase her and Sheva, Helena fired a few shots into its skull.  It didn’t dodge.  It fell forward to the ground, its powerful legs flopping down behind it.  Helena stepped over the body, her boots making uncomfortable squishing noises as she stepped over it.

She entered the cavern, and the first thing that hit her was the _smell_ —a smell of copper, rotting meat, and burning ash, all at once.  She ignored this, and placed her hands on the bloody ground to lower herself down from the ledge overlooking the room.  One of the B.O.W.s was lying limp over one of the boulders that had been pinning Leon’s wings down when he was being held prisoner.  The B.O.W. wasn’t moving, and Helena judged that by its position, it had been blown backward and broken its back in the explosion.

Another B.O.W., an insectoid monstrosity, still twitched with the half of a body that it still possessed.  She came across another B.O.W., one that was more spines than it seemed it had teeth—and it had a very full set of teeth—and it grasped upward toward her.  She pointed her gun down at its head and fired two shots.  The arm fell down limply.

Then, Helena came to Leon.  He was almost unrecognizable—his wings were flayed open, his chest was almost devoid of skin, and his arms were in no better shape, one broken at a bizarrely unnatural angle, and the other completely gone.  Helena crouched down and placed her hand on his face, barely visible at all beneath the blood—some of it his own, from his eye wound, and most of it had come from the other, obliterated monsters.

He was there, he was intact and—Helena held her breath as she watched his chest move weakly up and down—he was breathing.  Barely, but he was there, he was alive.  She brushed his hair out of his eyes, and knew that were he conscious, he would hate that.  She almost laughed, then realized again that there was still a high chance that he would die.  She didn’t have so much as a medikit—there was nothing she could do that would even begin to help him, other than call for help.  She realized in dismay that she did not have the GPS tracker and comm device—it was with Sheva, in the pocket of her cargo pants.  IT had alerted the B.O.W.s—the same B.O.W.s that where now dead all around her.

She turned back toward the ledge, and wondered if she could lift herself up over it to go find Sheva, or if she wouldn’t be able to do it with her ribs broken as they were.  She had to get Leon help—she was the one who did this to him, and she had to help him.  She had to _save him_.

That was when she heard and felt the rumbling simultaneously.  She looked up and saw the cracks spreading around the arch that marked the entrance to his side-cavern.  “Shit!” she half murmured, half-yelled.  She grabbed ahold of Leon’s hand, trying to ignore the blood—but _oh God how could she ignore the blood, it was everywhere, and she cause it, no—_ and she attempted to pull his body away.  The strain of his large mass, with mangled, stretched out wings, tore at her sides like tiger’s claws.

Leon wouldn’t budge, his body barely moving as Helena tugged at his arm.  Helena strained some more, almost letting out a scream due to the pain and exertion.  She pulled again as a hunk of rock fell down from the ceiling above her, shattering into pieces.  “No, no, _no_!”  She readjusted her grip on Leon’s wrist and pulled again—another fruitless effort.  Another, larger rock fell down toward her, along with some smaller stones that pelted the floor.

When Helena looked back to Leon, she noticed the thin film that was beginning to cover his body.  A membranous, slimy layer that seemed to be slowly thickening—a cocoon that was all too familiar to Helena.  “No, no, no, fuck, no, Leon!”  She tried to pull at the membrane, but it was already hardening and thickening, into the chrysalis she had to watch Deborah disappear into, into the chrysalis she had already lost Leon to once before…

The chunks of rock and debris were falling even more vigorously now, and Helena had no choice.  Not bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks—her hands were covered with Leon’s blood, anyway—she turned and began to sprint away, back into the main cavern with the high ceiling.

This she did just in time, because as her bloody boots began to splash into the pool at the center of the cavern, there was a louder rumbling and crash as the smaller room completely and totally fell in on itself, the former arch leaving nothing but a pile of rubble, the barrier between the main cave and the side cavern all in pieces on top of Leon and the dead B.O.W.s.  The dust from the collapse billowed outward and swam gently between her ankles.  Then, everything was still.

 

**17**

Both Sheva and Svetlana paused for a moment when they heard the explosion.  Belikova let out a shriek, and Sheva’s heart jumped in her chest.  If all went according to plan, the B.O.W.s would be out of the picture, and without them, that would mean they would just have to take care of Belikova who was—who was proving to be much more of a challenge to take down than she had originally expected.  Sheva wasn’t unskilled in hand-to-hand combat; it wasn’t her specialty, but she knew what she was doing, and she was strong.  Belikova, however, knew her every move before she made it, moving gracefully as she met Sheva blow-for-blow, with a few extra jabs of her own.

When she was distracted and apparently pained by the explosion, Sheva thought that she could make her move.  She shot a punch for the former president’s neck, but Belikova was fast, and was able to snap out of her brief episode and dodge out of the way, using the momentum of the dodge to jab at Sheva’s side.  This reminded Sheva of her bruised ribs, which did throb as she breathed hard.  She gritted her teeth and lowered her stance before lunging forward and tackling Svetlana to the ground, knocking her head against the rug-covered concrete floor.  A slight gasp escaped Svetlana’s mouth as she landed, and Sheva half-grinned.  This grin was short lived, however, when Belikova socked her in the jaw, knocking her off of her.

Pushing herself up with her elbows, Belikova leapt up onto her feet and turned, sprinting for the desk.  Sheva dashed after her, catching her legs as she had almost reached it.  Svetlana fell downward, kicking as she did, and her arms ricocheted from the edge of the desk with a _crack_.

Sheva crouched down to punch the woman, her fist balled and drawn back, but as she did, Svetlana whipped around, a sharp letter opener in her hand.  She swiped it forward at Sheva in a slash, and Sheva jumped backward just in time not to be caught by its tip.  She caught herself in a ready stance, and Belikova began to stand as well, a fury in her bloodshot eyes.

This was when they heard the second rumbling, this time from deep within the rock around them.  They both stopped, looking up at the ceiling and the walls around them.  It was this time that Belikova took advantage of the pause, launching herself at Sheva with a stabbing motion of the letter opener.  Sheva knocked the blade downward with the palm of her hand, using her other fist to knock Svetlana in the jaw.  Belikova tried to steady herself, shaking a little, but Sheva took her opportunity and swept her leg around, curled it under behind Svetlana’s knees, and shoved her backward, hard.  Belikova was knocked downward, and Sheva, caught up in the motion, fell down on top of her.

They locked arms for a moment, their hands near each other’s shoulders on the biceps, trying to hold the other off.  They rolled back and forth for a moment before Svetlana emerged on top.  She pulled back the letter opener and brought it down in a slash across Sheva’s face, narrowly missing her eye but taking out most of her right eyebrow.  Sheva winced and blinked away the blood that filled her vision almost immediately.

“Get— _off_!”  Sheva pushed upward with all her might, tossing Belikova to the side.  She pulled herself up into a crouch.  Svetlana jumped at Sheva again, but as she did, the final rumble came, and the rocks tumbling down outside of the bunker caused just enough of a lapse in her attention that she miscalculated her attack and Sheva was able to knock the letter opener out of her arm.  Taking advantage of her momentum already, Sheva grabbed ahold of the back of Belikova’s head and slammed her face into the top of her own desk.  When she released the woman, her body simply slipped to the floor.

Sheva stood up fully, breathing hard, and wiped some of the blood away from her eye.  It was quickly replaced by more.  She took a few more deep breaths, feeling not only the bruises on her ribs but the bruises _everywhere else_ , from the fight and the B.O.W. and this whole _night_.

Sheva turned around slowly in the room, and paused when she spied the laptop computer she’d snooped through earlier.  She went to the bed, grabbed it, tucked it under her arm, and went back to Belikova, who was crumpled on the floor.  Some blood was coming out of her broken nose, and there was already a large purple egg on her forehead, but she was still breathing, so Sheva left her there when she left the room to find Helena.

 

**18**

Helena felt an enormous relief when Sheva emerged on the balcony of the bunker.  She gave a brief wave down to Helena, who nodded back.  Helena walked closer to the bunker, her boots wet and bloody.  Behind her, the pool was polluted more and more as the blood and mud form her boots diffused outward.  There was no movement from the rubble.

“Belikova’s down and out,” said Sheva.  She pulled the GPS device out of her pocket and tapped on it.  A few cracks spider webbed the screen, but she was able to tap a few buttons before slipping it away.  “Backup is on its way to take care of all this—it’s over.”

“It—it is.”  Helena looked again to the rubble, as if simply looking would cause it to move.  It still did not.

“And Leon?”

Helena didn’t reply, and Sheva didn’t push it.  She swung her legs over the bar of the balcony’s railing and waved the laptop to Helena.  Helena came forward and caught the laptop when Sheva tossed it down to her, and then Sheva lowered herself down to the ground.

“Helena, let’s go.”  Helena didn’t move.  “Helena, I don’t know about the integrity of this cave, especially after the collapse…”  Her eyes darted to the rubble and back to Helena.  “We have to move.”

“No,” she said.  Helena turned from Sheva.  “No, not yet.”

“He’s dead,” said Sheva, “and it’s not your fault.  You did all you could to save him…”

“I did,” said Helena.  “I did, and it wasn’t enough, because he _isn’t_ dead.  And I…”

The rocks moved a bit, shifting.  Some pebbles ran down the sides, knocking softly against the stone floor.  Sheva stopped now, looking to the pile.  Both of the agents looked in silence, staring, each wondering to themselves whether or not they had actually seen the movement at all.

Then, some more rocks, larger rocks, tumbled off of the top of the pile.  They shuffled downward, and more of the larger pieces of debris began to move.  Helena took a step forward but stopped there, not daring to go any closer than that.

The rocks moved, and shifted, and then were still.  Without realizing it, Sheva held her breath.  Helena felt her heart thudding against her aching ribs.

Then, Leon emerged all at once, knocking more rocks backward as he burst upward out of the pile.  His red, fleshy wings stretched out even wider than they had before, and Helena felt a new tear on her face as she stepped toward him.

His whole body was fragmented, like thick plates of scale armor arranged in a grotesque array.  His arms were scrawny, but his legs were muscled and more powerful, his three-pronged foot claws reinforced and larger than before, to give him superior balance.

What took Helena by more surprise than anything else of his new, second transformation, was his face.

Before, Leon’s face had almost looked like it had when he was human.  His eyes glowed yellow, yes, and his sharp teeth sometimes protruded from his mouth, but his face looked almost passably human.  Now, that was not the case.

The eye Svetlana had burned out had been replaced by a series of smaller eyes, scattered around the side of his face, much like the mutations of the J’avo.  His face also was fragmentary, like the rest of his body, in cracks, and the left side of his mouth stretched backward, revealing a jagged and asymmetrical set of teeth that protruded and pointed.  His hair fell over his face in its normal fashion, apparently unchanged by his new mutation.

He took a step toward the two agents, and another.  Helena held her hand out to him, stretching it out and upward.  “Leon…” she said.

He stretched out his hand to her after a moment, slowly and carefully, as if he were still not sure exactly _how_ to use his arm yet.  Then, he pointed his hand to hers, touching fingertips.  He opened his toothy mouth, as if to say something, but nothing more than a squeaky roar came out, causing Helena almost to withdraw her hand.  She forced herself, however, to keep it out, touching his, because he was going to need it—he was more now than ever before what he always feared to become.

 

**19**

“Agent Alomar, how would you say Agent Kennedy handled this assignment?”  O’Brian sat back in his chair on the video screen, his hands folded neatly in front of him.

“Agent Kennedy?”  She looked down at her own hands, and looked back to him.  “He did exactly as instructed.”

“And in your own opinion, how was his performance?”  Sheva felt a _twang_ in the cut above her eye, and became suddenly incredibly conscious of the stitches there.  She didn’t itch it, though it cried out for her to.

“His performance?” she asked.  “You’re asking me about his performance?  That man gave his life more than once to save this world.”  She paused.  “You know that.”

“I know,” said Clive.  He adjusted his tie, which was also hanging loose from his neck, atop his unbuttoned top button.  “I—I know.”

 

**20**

“He won’t talk to me,” said Helena, “so no, _Director_ , I do not know how he feels.”

“I just asked—”

“And I’m telling you,” said Helena.  “That you can pull him out of the field for a while if you have any semblance of concern for his well-being.”

“Agent Harper, if you’re too close…”

“By accepting this mission, I put Leon—Agent Kennedy—into direct danger that killed him.”

“He didn’t die.”

“ _Emotionally_ , O’Brian.  Pretend for a moment you have them yourself, _Jesus_.”

“The B.S.A.A. is growing more uncomfortable with having B.O.W.s on board, Agent Harper,” said O’Brian.

“That B.O.W., along with the incomparable efforts of Agent Alomar, are the reason you’re not a J’avo right now,” said Helena.  “So if I was you, I would be a bit more careful with what I do…”

“He feels guilty?”

“He feels he’s a monster.”

O’Brian didn’t reply to that.  He shuffled some papers on his side of the desk that didn’t particularly need to be shuffled.

“Just—give him some time.”

O’Brian nodded.  They sat for a moment, and Helena stood up to go.  She wheezed for a moment, still feeling the pain in her chest.  The doctor said she’d be feeling the broken ribs for a while.

“Wait, Agent Harper…”  Helena turned around.  “I just—I want you to know how grateful I am, and the whole B.S.A.A. is, for what you and Agents Alomar and Kennedy have done.  Thank you.”

Helena just nodded, and left the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I've been working on this fic since May, and I'm very excited to finally be posting it. This originally started as a way to reconcile the design changes of Leon's infected form in the ~official AU canon~, but it grew into this bigger project and I love where it ended up. Thank you so much for writing, and I hope to revisit this AU soon!


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